Starting from Zero

Chapter 99

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I pried off that broken cannon sh.e.l.l from my waist. Man that was close. My HP bar is almost empty, and all companions" HP are red now. I didn"t survive that shot. I was revived to 10% HP thanks to Phiona"s skill.

With that kind of power I"d say one hit is enough to kill ten players if they stand in a line. Looks like naval warfare should be fought over by ships. Individual players can"t play against cannon shots no matter how many levels they have.

Another cannon ball landed on the deck railing, bringing some wooden pieces and two sailors with it. Oh s.h.i.t. My money!!

"Chief officer! Where are the enemies? Who"s. .h.i.tting us?"

"Target report! 3 o"clock, 10 kilos away!" The lookout shouted back.　

"Our side cannons can"t reach that far!" The chief officer yelled.

I yelled towards Zirai (while dumping water from my boots). "Turn the crystal cannon around!"

"I can"t see them! Too many ships, which is the target?" She shouted back. Oh shoot. We should have made an aiming scope for the cannon!

"Put the helm over! Let"s move close!" I ordered the chief.

The ship made a sharp right-turn. I saw another cannon ball grazing past our ship"s nose.

I asked Yuri to use her song to heal up my companions. I"d already asked Lucky to join the fight if that hit didn"t cut down our health bars.

...But Zirai has Skyfire!

I quickly jumped into the cannon emplacement and dragged Zirai out.

"Bring Skyfire to the enemy ships. I"ll take care of the shooting!"

"Leave it to me!" Zirai summoned her dragon and left.

I activated my Star Gaze and scouted the enemies. I never expected this ring to come to handy in this way. The binocular function helped me look at the other ships nice and clear!

Clang! A sharp metal noise and a violent shake threw me off the cannon platform.

"What was that??"

I walked around and saw a cannon sh.e.l.l lodged inside the cannon"s shields. Thank G.o.d I asked for this protection or that shot would have blown up the whole tip of our ship if it detonated our crystal cannon!

I returned to my position and looked at the conflict area. I saw around 500 ships in the chaos, about 300 friendly ones. There are fewer j.a.panese ships, but they"re having the upper hand! Those enemies ships seem to share certain standards. There are only several fixed sizes and styles.

On the other hand, Chinese ships are greatly diverged. There can be like 20 different sizes between the biggest one and smallest one, and they don"t have a unified commander. They survived this long only because they have the bigger number.

I soon spotted the one who hit us just now, and I don"t need anyone to tell me that it"s the "Nagashima". That cannon with a super long barrel is just too catchy to the eye. I don"t think any of the other ships can reach us.

Let"s return the favor!

I aimed at Nagashima and shouted towards outside: "Do it!"

Pa.s.serby and Big Pot pulled the lever. A violet bullet flew towards the Nagashima while carrying a long trail behind it.

All players in the midst of the fight noticed this peculiar object. Ordinary cannon shots don"t have trails behind them, so this abnormality attracted a lot of attention.

The violet bullet precisely landed on the front tip of Nagashima. With a distant explosion sound, a giant fireball emerged into the sky. The attack took out the entire front part of Nagashima, including the annoying sniper cannon. The remaining body soon broke into several parts and went down into the water. From the Star Gaze, I can see a huge number of glittering equipments floating among the remains.

Ha! No matter they say a war brings unlimited fortune. For victors, at least. I"m so go over there collecting golds and trinkets to my heart"s content when the battle is over!

I saw another ship near the Nagashima going under. I don"t think we hit it though?

The ship is submerging as a whole. Must be the Kirigakure!

I can only watch as the Kirigakure disappeared under the surface. We can"t shoot the crystal cannon too fast or we"ll risk breaking it. And the other cannons are out of range!

The chief officer entered the emplacement. "Captain, a ship flagged to ask where we came from. How do we respond?"

"Did they tell us where they come from?"

"No. Do we ask them?"

"Nah, tell them we"re from the Blizzard Rose. And ask them about the situation over there."

"Yes sir!"

The officer told his orders to his flagman. This is how the officers mainly convey their messages, as not everyone can hear you on a ship during a fight, just by yelling.

The accompanying flagman sent signals to another flagman standing on top of the mast, who in turn sent the message to the faraway ship.

The response came in soon enough.

" "The Anti-j.a.panese a.s.sociation appreciates your help. We suffered great loss and require heavy fire support!" "

"Tell them to move clear from our line of sight. This ship IS heavy fire!"

" "Brilliant! Kick their sorry a.s.ses for us!" "

"Ahaha! That must be King Conqueror!"

"Is that a message too, sir?" The officer is busy writing on his log without lifting his head.

"Oh no no, don"t send that one. Did they do as told?"

He checked the area. "Yes, the ships from the a.s.sociation gave us enough s.p.a.ce to reach the enemies."

"Tell the crew to speed up. Let"s move! Ram any enemy ships on the way. Oh and, remember to get that guy we tied up on the rails earlier off there."

The office left to give orders.

"Raise the sails, expend the ramming horn. Brace for impact!"

"Understood! Raise the sails! Oars out! Top speed! Ready the ramming horn! All crew get ready for collision!"

The sudden acceleration caused Bi-Lin to let out a loud, deep booming noise as if some monster is roaring. Our ship quickly went past all the Chinese boats and went towards enemies. A series of sharp spikes stretched out in front of the ship, full steel, with crystal covers on their tips. I"m sure these things can be used to shave body hair if anyone wants to.

We approached the j.a.panese within a matter of minutes. No one is expecting such speed from a ship this large. As our ship stands taller among them all, I can clearly see the enemy players panicking around on their decks. Some of the ships tried to evade, which is then proved to be an impossible task when we"re charging full-speed. Besides, the area is too crowded, they"re blocking their own escaping routes.

Several brave ones maneuvered and moved into a line, facing us. They all have impact horns installed. I"m confident that our ship can break them up using our size advantage, but our ship would get seriously damaged in the process. Man they really have some nice commanders to order their people as a whole, with such efficiency.

Putting the aggression aside, I have to admit they are good teams. I never really understand their "bushido spirit". But now their resolve to sacrifice themselves to stop us really has its merit.

But I"m not going to get convinced this easily!

I spun the crystal cannon towards them, and made a shot just before we contact with them. The great explosion blasted those trying to block us into pieces, which caused the other players to run and try to hide from the falling debris.

Our ship went on after the first defense line broke. The ships in the second line, with their sides against us, became our targets.

The ramming horn cut into their bodies like a knife stabbing a cake. I can already see j.a.panese players getting knocked away or torn up around us.

In normal circ.u.mstances, a ship ramming another would be stopped and bounced back a little by the force. But Bi-Lin is too large! It feels like a military carrier just knocked over a small cargo ship. The enemy ships are not even half of our size and we don"t feel any obvious obstacles at all. Instead of stopping, we went through the broken ships and continued forward. And we penetrated 8 ships along the way. We went all the way to the back of their entire fleet!

Seems that Bi-Lin can be very well used as an icebreaker, if time calls for it.

I can hear the j.a.panese yelling at us, probably calling names. But none of them is using their translating service so I can"t understand any of them.

The second officer asked: "Do we prepare for close combat?"

I looked around. "Not now. Too many ships, we don"t have enough men for that. Tell the cannon crew to free-fire. Let"s not waste this perfect chance!"

With another deafening roar, countless cannon shots were unleashed. We"re so close to each other and there are too many of them, so we don"t even need to aim carefully to score hits, as long as we don"t shoot towards the sky. Cannon roars and scattering ship fragments filled up the entire area.

"Fire Archers, in position!" Second officer gave another command.

The 500 Fire Archers we hired stepped into two lines and began to shoot burning arrows towards the other ships. The arrows all carry small leather pouches on their heads. They must contain oil or something easy to burn. When the arrow lands on anything, the pouch breaks and fire will spread with the scattering content, keeping a wide area of enemy ships on fire for a long time. The archers can only get their attacks somewhere around 600 meters away. Otherwise they"ll be more destructive than the cannons!

The enemies are not foolish. They already realized what it means if our mobile artillery stays inside their formation. Their cannons fired at us as well. Shots began to travel near the deck. Hawk and Elfy are still helping me with the crystal cannon outside, and they need to be very careful if they don"t want to take an iron ball to the face.

More shots would land on the ship"s sides, and that"s when I realized all the money I spent really paid off! From their power, I can tell most of them are using the Heavy Cannon we saw back at the weapon shop. They have Bastion Cannons too but each ship can only afford two of them as the main guns. That"s still a lot better than the other Chinese ships. As far as I can see, our people can only afford Plain Cannons. Some of them are even carrying the cheapest Bare Shots. Only a small number, like those from the Righteous League, have enough fund to equip their ships with some Chain Cannons and several Bastion Cannons on their main forces.

That said, their advantage is nothing compared to Bi-Lin! The small number of holes along our ship are all caused by enemies within really close distance. Some of the others are made by Bastion Cannon shots. This means the other types of cannons can only penetrate our platings in close range, as for most ships farther away, only Bastion Cannons and that sniping ship (already sunk) can cause real damage to us.

"Chief officer! Tell them to focus fire on any close-up ships and get rid of them as fast as possible!"

"Yes sir!"

My order went through quickly, and those within close proximity were all blasted into wooden pieces in a brief moment. Now that will make our work a lot easier. The rest of the enemies are of no threat to us.

They do have several Bastion Cannons but that small number--

Boom!! That came from our ship. We"re hit again, hard!

"What the f.u.c.k? Didn"t we wipe them out??"

"Target report! Enemy ship coming from our six!"

"Behind us??"

I left the crystal cannons and ran up to the command tower. A thin, long ship which stands pretty low above the sea surface is facing against us sideways, firing at us. There is no cannon emplacement at the rear of Bi-Lin. We can"t attack back.

Gale rushed to me and pointed at the ship. "That is the "Kirigakure"! It appeared out of nowhere just like that and destroyed our ship!"

The submarine huh? So it has been hiding in the water and sneaked behind us. The ship/submarine is fully equipped with Bastion Cannons. The good part is, it doesn"t have s.p.a.ce for additional cannon rooms. There are only cannons on its deck. Every new function has its drawback I guess.

However there are still more than 30 cannons there, if we don"t do something it will open up a big hole on our a.s.s!

"Tank!"

I summoned Tank and ordered him to move to the rear side. "See that ship? Bring it down!"

Tank went into a.s.sault mode quickly.

The enemy must have noticed us, since they stopped their attack and began to submerge again. I can already see their sailors running inside.

Not fast enough though. Tank glided in the air and landed on Kirigakure. He raised his giant scythe and slashed at the ship"s deck. Crack! The scythe sunk into the board halfway.

Kirigakure is still sinking. But with that big hole, I don"t think it will ever emerge again.

I watched as my EXP bar getting filled up like mad. Man, I should do this more!

Kirigakure finally went into the water entirely, before a series of bubbles came up, bringing a lot of wooden shards with equipments on them. Tank already flew back. Beetles can"t swim.

I can see Zirai fighting with j.a.panese players in the air on Skyfire. I"ve done a lot of work but the situation didn"t improve as I expected. All the arrows are making it really hard for Skyfire to do anything. He can throw one or two fireb.a.l.l.s down into the enemy groups but they don"t do much damage.　　

I ordered Lucky and Phiona to prepare for close combat. Loong"er also received my order to move behind enemy lines. Her job is to sabotage enemy ship rudders. This move may seem unimpressive, but I"m sure it will cause as much damage as the crystal cannon.

Without steering, those ships will only get into total chaos, they may even ram into other friendly ships.

"Charge!" I yelled to the chief. Our ship gained speed and moved inside enemy formation.

"All hands fire at will!"

The 600 cannons began to display their full power. All the cannon shots caused thick smoke around us as if we"re fighting in the clouds.

After several rounds of cannon fire, the ships on both sides of us all caught fire and sank. They didn"t sink immediately. They tried to fire back in the final moment. A large number of shots landed on our ship, most of which were repelled by our armor plates. The attacks had no obvious effect apart from causing some scratches. But our defense is not invincible. When some parts are damaged continuously, tears and breaches still appeared.

Enemy cannon fire is becoming more intense. People in the cannon chambers are well protected, but those on the deck are completely pinned down now. Our 200 cannons on the deck are made useless!

Hawk crawled beside me and yelled: "Ziri! We need to do something!" He pointed at the mess. "We can"t attack like this! I can"t even stand up! Thank G.o.d those Bastion Cannons are breech loaded or we"d be fu*ked up already!"

I looked at the dense enemy ships and frowned. Too many. We do have good firepower and defense, but our sailors can still be killed. It looks a bit funny when I saw a sailor pushing a sh.e.l.l into the cannon while lying on the deck, poked his head carefully to check enemy position, then tried to grab the trigger rope without lifting his body.

We suddenly felt a decrease in enemy attacks. The other Chinese ships had enough time to regroup, now they launched their attacks again. There are still a good number of them left so the enemies panicked to engage them.

"There they are!" I posed an "okay" towards Hawk. He grinned and went back to his cannon.

All the sailors now regained posture and began to shoot back at the enemies. They"re even shooting faster than before. Probably trying to get some revenge after being restricted for so long.

The relief didn"t last long. A big explosion almost deafened everyone, and our ship swayed to one side violently. I thought we"re going to turn when the momentum stopped, and we managed to regain balance.

"What"s going on??"

Chief stumbled to me. Before he can say anything, another explosion occurred at the ship"s rear. Our ship was lifted up before it dropped to the water again. I"m totally fine since I"ve been standing in the front. But those at the back side were thrown into the air briefly, and not all of them made it back onto the deck. Some of the cannon rounds are also rolling around now. The sailors ignored their wounds and rushed to save these explosives. It"ll be a disaster if they go off here on the ship.

Most of the escaped sh.e.l.ls were either saved by the sailors or fell into the water. A small number of them b.u.mped into something but none exploded. Phew.

Then I heard a clanking noise nearby as if a metal can is rolling on metal floor. Everyone watched in silence as a cannon ball slowly but surely rolled towards in front of me...

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